


All that is Gold

by Cinnamongirl



Category: Rumpelstilzchen | Rumpelstiltskin (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Gen, Rumpelstiltskin is a fae
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:21:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28083108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinnamongirl/pseuds/Cinnamongirl
Summary: “What are you doing?"“I’m trying to spin this straw into gold.”“Why would you want to do that?”“Because I’ll get killed if I don’t.”“That sounds like quite the predicament. Would you like some help?”
Comments: 24
Kudos: 45
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	All that is Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lightningwaltz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/gifts).



The first time she met him, she was in the process of trying to feed a piece of straw into a spinning wheel. The straw broke apart, of course. She managed to almost twist some of it but she couldn’t turn it into anything resembling thread, let alone gold.

“What are you doing?”

She jumped slightly, dropping a handful of straw into her lap. There was a small, strange-looking man inside the room with her. He didn’t look like any of the king’s men, or anyone she’d ever seen before.

“I’m trying to spin this straw into gold.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Because I’ll get killed if I don’t.”

“That sounds like quite the predicament. Would you like some help?”

“Well, yes, if you happen to be able to spin straw into gold then I would be most grateful for your assistance.” She was tempted to punch the man in his smug little face.

He looked at the large pile of straw in the corner, and then at the spinning wheel, and finally at her. “That sounds simple enough. What will you give me in return?”

“How about my necklace?” It wasn’t like she had anything to lose by humoring him.

He glanced down to where the necklace was hanging between her breasts. It occurred to her that he’d said _What will you give me in return?_ as if he were trying to negotiate a price at the market and not like he was trying to coerce her into going to bed with him, which was almost the strangest thing about this situation.

“That sounds fair.” He held a hand out to her. “Give it to me and I’ll start working.”

She took off the necklace, expecting him to grab it and run away. Instead, he put it around his own neck. He was so small that the necklace fell nearly down to his waist. The necklace had been a gift from her father and it used to be her most prized possession, but she didn’t want to think about her father right now. Besides, it wouldn’t do her any good if she was dead.

“Well, move over. I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

She got up off the stool and watched as he sat down where she’d been sitting and picked up some of the straw that she’d dropped. He fed it into the wheel, the same way that she’d been trying to do it, but something strange happened. The straw twisted and thinned as he spun the wheel and he stretched it out until it started wrapping around the spool, just like thread. He kept the wheel spinning, adding more straw, and soon he had several loops of what looked like gold wire.

“How are you doing that?”

“Oh, it’s an old trick. It’s easy once you get the hang of it.”

“Do _you_ need any help?”

“You can pass me that straw, if you don’t mind.”

She handed him more straw and he spun it easily, as if he wasn’t doing something impossible. The more she looked at him the more she thought about how strange he was. He was very short and very old, even though he moved as easily as a young man. His ears were too long but his nose was too small and his eyes were too far apart and everything was slightly off-proportion compared to anyone she’d ever met before.

They worked together for hours until she turned around to grab another armful of straw and saw that they’d finished with all of it. When she turned back to the spinning wheel, the man was gone. She tried to open the door to see where he went but it was locked.

It didn’t occur to her until later to wonder why a man who could create gold from straw would even have any use for jewelry.

The king was delighted when he saw the gold the next morning. “Oh, my darling, you’re even more talented than your father said you were! Go home and rest, I’m sure you’re exhausted.”

“Thank you, your majesty.” 

“I’ll expect you back this evening,” he said, in a tone that made it clear he wouldn’t accept any argument.

It felt like her heart was breaking inside and she hoped desperately that it didn’t show on her face. “Of course, your majesty.” 

“Are you doing this again?” This time, she saw the man walk through the door. She jumped up and tried to run out of the room but he let it close behind him, once again firmly locked.

“Who are you, anyway? Do you work for the king?” She realized that the man had never introduced himself, nor had he asked for her name.

“Oh, I’m not from here. I assume you’ll want my help again?”

“Yes, please. He said that he would kill me if I don’t turn all of this into gold.” She gestured to the pile of straw, which was larger this time.

“What will you give me?” He was still wearing her necklace.

She looked down at herself, searching for anything that might be valuable. “I’ve got this ring?” It had belonged to her mother, but she knew that her mother would want her to do what she had to in order to save her own life.

He barely glanced at the ring on her finger. “That will do. Come on, let’s get started.”

She gave him the ring and he tried to put it on, but it slid off his small fingers. It was even too big for his thumb. He finally took the necklace off and threaded the ring onto it.

As they had done before, she handed him straw and he spun it into gold. It occurred to her that it might not even be real gold, but it was close enough to fool the king and that was all that mattered. Her head spun with questions but she was too afraid to ask any of them, for fear of offending this strange, powerful man who had decided to save her.

This time, when they’d finished, he bowed to her and said “It’s been a pleasure, but you should really get some rest.” 

“If you can open the door, why don’t you just let me out?”

“That wasn’t the deal,” he said, and then he was gone.

The next night, there was barely room for the spinning wheel amid all the piles of straw. She wasn’t surprised when the man appeared again, still wearing the necklace with the ring on it.

“I don’t have any more jewelry for you,” she said. 

“In that case, you’ll have to owe me. How about your first-born child?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ll spin all of this into gold and then you’ll hand over your first child to me. I think it sounds fair, don’t you?”

“I don’t even have any children.”

“That’s fine, I can wait.”

She thought about how her mother had said that she and her father tried for a long time to have children, but she only ever managed to get pregnant the one time. Maybe she would inherit their fortune, or misfortune. “I suppose I can’t refuse,” she said.

“Do you live here in the castle?” she asked him, as he was working on the straw.

“I would never want to live here. Too many nosy servants running around.”

“Then what were you doing here? How did you get in?”

“I was bored, and I thought that I would poke around the castle to see what was going on.”

“It sounds like you were the nosy one.”

“Well, it’s lucky that I found you, wasn’t it? I’m sure that you’d be dead by now if I hadn’t.”

“Yes, very lucky.”

They worked all night, and into the morning. The man was just finishing with the last of the straw when she heard someone unlocking the door. By the time the king entered, the man was nowhere to be found.

“Oh, how wonderful!” the king said. “You are truly the most remarkable girl in the whole kingdom. And I have good news! You’ll never have to spin straw again because your father has given his permission for you to marry me. I would never expect a future queen to stoop to doing such menial work.” He smiled at her but it was a cruel, predatory smile.

“Thank you, your highness. You are too kind.” 

True to his word, the king never demanded that she spin straw into gold again, but he did marry her and crown her queen. 

Life at court was easier in some ways but much more difficult in other ways. She never had to do a hard day’s work, including any kind of spinning, but the castle was full of people who were all trying to manipulate and backstab each other in order to get ahead, and many of them saw the new queen who had come from nowhere as an easy target. 

Her husband seemed to think of her as something pretty that he could show off, like an expensive piece of art. He had her sit next to him at events and he had her share his bed at night but otherwise he mostly ignored her. She didn’t mind sleeping with him, and she might even have enjoyed it, except that every time she feared that she would become pregnant and the small man would come back to claim what he was owed.

She discovered that she was pregnant less than three months after they were married. She felt cold inside and paralyzed with fear, like she’d felt the first time that the king threatened to kill her.

It occurred to her that pregnancies end sometimes. The fact that she was with child didn’t necessarily mean that she would give birth. In fact, she’d heard of things that could be done to end a pregnancy. She considered the idea, but realized that she wouldn’t be able to research the topic without attracting the king’s attention and being accused of treason. Besides, she’d become pregnant easily and quickly, and there was no reason why it wouldn’t just happen again.

In due time, she gave birth to a son. He was large and healthy, with a loud, wailing cry. The king was overjoyed. She was sore and exhausted and still bleeding from childbirth but she insisted on moving the baby’s cradle next to her bed so that she could hear if the small man came for him in the night. He didn’t come that night, or the next night, and she started to hope that he’d forgotten.

When he did come, he looked exactly the same as she remembered. He was even still wearing her old jewelry. It looked like the ring had been polished recently. “I see that congratulations are in order,” he said. 

“You can’t have him.” She’d hardly been queen for a year but she had gotten good at saying no to people who wanted things from her.

“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice,” he said calmly. “You agreed, after all.”

She sat up straight and glared at him, like a queen would. “If you won’t leave empty-handed, take me instead.”

“Do you want to leave your husband and run away with me? I’m flattered, but you’re much too young for me.”

“You’re actually the most reasonable man in my life.” She thought about her fool of a father, who had a wild imagination and no impulse control, and her husband, the vain and manipulative king. At least this man had gone out of his way to help her. “Besides, my husband was going to have me killed last year. I won’t let my son die in my place.”

“Did you think I was going to kill him? I would never!” He looked offended at the suggestion.

“If you’re going to kill anyone, it will be me.” She realized that he could easily kill her and then run off with the boy, but his magic was powerful enough that there was nothing stopping him from doing that anyway. She had to trust that he would be true to his word.

“How very brave of you.” The man stroked his chin, thoughtfully. “I have another offer, if you’re interested. If you can guess my name within three days, I’ll let you keep your life and your child.”

“I just have to guess your name?”

“Yes.”

“Uh, Jacob?”

“No.” 

“Is it Wilhelm?”

“No.”

“Carl?”

“Wrong again.”

She tried every name that she could think of, but they were all wrong. “You have three days,” he told her.

The next night, she was ready for him. She wore one of her nicest dresses and most expensive jewelry, just in case any of it caught the man’s eye. She was holding the census book that listed everyone who lived in the kingdom. She went through every name in the book, but the man said no to all of them. “Remember, I’m not from here,” he said.

The day after that, she sent a messenger to look for the man. The messenger was carefully chosen, one of the few people who she felt like she could trust. “He isn’t in any of the records, but he can’t live too far away,” she said. She drew a picture of the man for him. “If you can’t find him, see if you can find any strange, foreign names for me.”

She wondered if the man’s name was something unpronounceable, or maybe something so offensive and vile that no queen would dare say it out loud. Perhaps he had no name at all.

The messenger returned shortly before nightfall. He hadn’t found any trace of the man but he had a list of names for her, each one stranger than the last. She asked her servants to dress her as if she was getting ready for a ball, with her hair down around her shoulders and powder on her face and an elaborate gown that she would trip over if she weren’t sitting down.

Anyone else would have bowed in respect as soon as they saw her, but the man didn’t seem to notice. “Do you know what my name is?” he asked.

She went through every name on the list, and several more that she made up on the spot, but they were all wrong.

“You have one more day,” he told her.

The messenger came to her the next day. “My queen, I saw a strange man leaving the castle last night, so I followed him from a distance. He led me through the woods and up a mountain until he stopped at a small house. He built a fire in front of the house and hopped around it on one leg, reciting a strange rhyme. I wrote it down for you.” The messenger showed her the paper where he had written:

_Today I brew, tomorrow I bake, and then away the queen’s child I take  
For no one knows from whence I came, or that Rumpelstiltskin is my name!_

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she said out loud. The name was nearly bigger than the man himself, but it sounded like a name with magic in it.

That evening, she wore a plain dress, the kind that she would have worn when she was just a miller’s daughter. She tied her hair up like she used to do when she was spinning wool and didn’t want to get her hair caught.

She heard her bedroom door open. “Rumpelstiltskin, is that you?” she called out.

He looked surprised. “You know, I expected that you’d spend more time building up to it, but I suppose that fulfills our agreement. I bid you farewell.” He turned to leave again.

“Wait!”

“Yes?”

“I might be interested in another agreement.”

He turned around. “You have everything now, don’t you? What could you possibly want from me?”

“What were you going to do with my son? You said that you weren’t going to kill him. Was your plan to disappear with the firstborn heir to the throne, only to bring him back at a politically opportune time in the future? Or did you just want to take what would hurt me the most?”

“I have no use for politics,” he said. “I’m a foreigner, as you know, but I’ve been banished from my home and I’m all alone here. I thought it might be nice to have a companion and I don’t have any of my own kind around to swap for a human baby, so I had to bargain for one. I was hoping to raise him to be my apprentice, maybe teach him some magic of his own.”

“If you always try to recruit apprentices by extorting people for their children, I’m not surprised that you were exiled.”

“Yes, well, I believe you said that you wanted to make another agreement with me?”

She took a deep breath, and thought of all the practice she’d had at negotiating with people in court. “My son stays here with me, but you’re welcome to train him, and any other children that I might have in the future. I’ll even have you hired as a tutor.”

“Is that all?”

“Teach me magic too.” 

“I don’t think you realize what you’re asking,” he said. “Nothing is free, especially not magic.”

“You want a friend and an apprentice, don’t you? I want to learn magic.” It was only a matter of time before the king expected her to spin straw into gold again, or decided that he was tired of her altogether. If she had magic of her own, she would always be able to protect herself.

He shrugged. “All right, if that’s what you want.” He stuck out his small hand and she shook it. “Your first lesson starts this time tomorrow. I expect you to be ready.”

“I look forward to learning from you, Rumpelstiltskin.”


End file.
